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Fund Raising
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Did your last school fundraising program fall short of your expectations? Do you know
why this happened? There are many contributing factors to the success or failure of any
fundraising campaign. Some factors occur from things that are out of our control like
hurricanes and other disasters. Barring any of these unfortunate events, here are 4 tips to
help you get the most out of your school fundraising efforts.

1.) Prizes / Incentives with Value

Your incentive program is the single most important factor when determining the success
or failure of your fundraising campaign. It almost could be said that you could sell the
most horrible product in the world and do real well if you motivate your students
correctly. Of course no one is going to do that, but I'm trying to make my point by being
absurd.

In order for your prize program to be successful in motivating more of your students to
participate, you must target your prizes for the specific demographic that makes up your
school. In short, your prizes need to be age appropriate AND something that the parents
of the younger students can get excited about too. Most school sponsored fundraisers
don't target the parents with the incentive plan. However, if you want to get their
attention, do a prize program that will knock their socks off.

Simply put, if your school is filled with 5 - 12 year olds, then your incentive plan should
include items that would appeal to that group of students that would also impress their
parents. While trinket type prizes might go over well with the kids, moms will look at
them and simply trash the brochure

Choosing the wrong type of incentive for your target group can have a huge negative
impact on your school fundraising campaign.

2.) Make Sure The Word Makes It Home

It is not enough to simply have a great incentive package for the students. Remember,
many of your students are so young that they will have a hard time getting it across to
their parents just what is being offered for certain sales levels. In fact, you might just go
ahead and figure that your prize brochure and parent letter have to do the selling of the
incentives to the parents.

The best way you can make sure that the magnitude of your prize program makes it
home is to have a demonstration of the prizes at school on the day the sales brochures
go home and to have a parent letter or prize brochure which pictures the prizes for the
parents. Doing both will guarantee that your parents get the message that "This is no
ordinary fundraising prize program."

3.) Sales and Safety Coaching

Most fundraising salespeople are little kids who are either going to have to sell Grandma
and family friends some of the products that they have in their sales brochure, or they are
going to have to convince Mom to do it for them. If your prizes are worth the effort, your
students will turn on the charm and get it done! One of the best ways is to coach your
students to ask mom and dad and mom's best friend and an aunt or two to take turns
taking the sales brochure to work with them. If you coach your students to do this, you
will go a long way on overcoming safety issues in fundraising.

4.) Safety

Personally, I favor structuring the prizes to motivate every student in the school to sale to
20 items max. Beyond that most students are going to have to go beyond family, friends
of the family and people they know real well to make those higher sales numbers. That to
me is a child safety issue.

We have been structuring incentive programs for years that are geared toward rewarding
students heavily for just selling 5 - 15 things. For a school with over 250 students,
especially if they have been plagued by low participation in past school fundraising efforts,
this approach to the prize program will usually double your previous sales. Simple as that!

In fact if you have been having 25% participation in past fundraisers, a 15% increase in
your participation will double your sale. I know this sounds odd, but that is the power of
the numbers in large groups.

Safety is important no matter what age group your students are, but even more so if they
are small children. I personally prefer to give prizes that are worthwhile for simply selling
a few items to family, friends and people they know. Then mom or dad can carry the
brochure to work to help out too.

Use these simple fundraising tips to make your next school fundraising event a complete
success.

About the Author

School fundraising should and could be something you do only once a year to raise all the
money you need. If you have been disappointed with your school fundraising results
lately, go to http://aimfundraising.com/prizes.htm and see how you can improve your
results.


Copyright (c) 2008 AIM Fundraising
4 Ways to Maximize Your School Fundraising Efforts by Juan Franco